Seventy years, fifty-four of which were spent on the tatami mats. <a href="https://www.archysport.com/2024/01/shin-gi-tai-the-soul-of-our-judo-club/” title=”Shin Gi Tai: The Soul of Our Judo Club”>Frédéric Durand, judo coach of Shin Gi Taï of Borgo, has dedicated his life to this sport, which he considers more as a philosophy, a school of thought, “we are black belts on the mat and black belts in life”.
He put on his first judogi by chance, after seeing one of his high school friends scribbling ideograms in his notebook: “CThese are the names of judo holds… come try it with me.“Frédéric Durand is 16 years old, he lives on rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in Paris and catches the virus immediately. “I couldn’t explain it.he admits behind his small rimmed glasses. There was already a dimension in the effort, the respect, the technique. I found my feet in a club at Porte Saint-Martin, on Sundays we went to train outside Paris. I was doing judo five days a week. Our teacher also gave lessons at the Ministry of Finance and we practiced in the Louvre! It was crazy. There were Japanese tourists watching us and some we gave a judogi for them to join us.“
An adventure behind the Iron Curtain
Diligent, passionate, he will obtain his black belt after two years, attending the first training room of the French team, at Central, in his neighborhood. Start to dream. At the 1973 French junior championships, he finished ninth. It was not a podium finish but he joined the Joinville Battalion the following year. Better, he won his selection, in -63 kilos, forr the military world championships in Rio! “I’ve never been on a plane!he laughs. I won bronze individually and also in teams. It was wonderful. ”
Until this phone call which tells him of the death of his father. Life then takes a harsh, hard turn. He immersed himself in his sport, worked at the Ministry of Finance, prepared a Capes, entered the judo school to learn teaching and trained with the French team. A week before his baccalaureate, his mother kicked him out and there he was in a maid’s room lent to him by a friend, revising his lessons on a simple box spring.
Obsessed with his judo, in 1977, he joined the French FSGT team to a tournament in Leipzigthen in the GDR. A journey that marks the young man: there he meets the woman who will be the mother of his children. Problem: she lives behind the Iron Curtain and cannot join him in France! Start then a clandestine lovemade of trains monitored by the Stasi, hidden accommodation, reunions in Hungary.
“In Osaka, I was dying”
And Frédéric Durand continues his path as a judoka at the same time. Which leads him to Japan. ” I left in 1978 with a friend and stayed there for six months to train. I only had enough to pay for my return ticket. To earn a little money, I gave French lessons. I got on the tatami facing the Osaka police in the morning and in the evening we trained with the municipal club. Two of us lived in twelve square meters futon. We broke the slab and we were cut up by Japanese judokas. But the municipal club got me a selection for a tournament without a weight category… it was hard but it was incredible. “
Back in France, he continued his career as a judo teacher, worked as a wine deliveryman, dishwasher in a restaurant, handler at the Eiffel Tower… and at the same time, from 1986, turned to psychomotor studies. The following year the Herblay club in Val d’Oise hired him for the year.
